Nielsen: Video Games Approaching "5th Network" Status

According to a new report issued by Nielsen PreView called The Video Game Handbook, Americans, as a whole, spend more time playing video games than they do watching the CW. And video games -- the real "5th Network" -- may even be closing in on NBC. But big time gamers are also big time TV viewers: The top quintile of gamers -- who average 93 minutes of console usage per day -- consumed as many minutes of TV as the weakest video game users. Interestingly, video game users appear to shift back and forth from video game mode to TV mode in a consistent pattern. Among console users, their gaming peaks around 7:00 p.m. while TV viewing peaks around 9:00 p.m. That perhaps indicates that advertisers should attempt to use both media to reach consumers in tandem.